The present invention relates to laser systems and more particularly to apparatus for transmitting a high-power laser beam onto a workpiece for drilling, cutting or welding the workpiece.
As is known in the art, high-power such as 400 Watt average power, lasers have a wide variety of applications, such as precision drilling, cutting and welding of metal workpieces. Neodymium: Yttrium-aluminum-garnet (Nd:YAG) lasers are particularly useful for such purposes. The beam generated by a laser, such as a Nd:YAG laser, must be transmitted to a work station where the beam is directed onto the material to be processed, that is, the workpiece. In the prior art, an assembly of mirrors and prisms was used to transmit the laser beam to the work station. While such arrangement functioned satisfactorily in some applications, such system is bulky and the flexibility with which the beam may be maneuvered about the workpiece limited.
Recently, fiber optic cable capable of transmitting such high-power laser energy has been developed, and the possibility of integrating such fiber optic cable into a system for delivering a laser beam to a work station for material processing (e.g. drilling, cutting and welding) has been discussed.